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Caldwell, a native of Montclair, New Jersey and graduate of William & Mary, was signed by the Colts after going undrafted in the 2010 NFL Draft. In 2011, he started 13 games at strong safety for the team, collecting 67 tackles and four passes deflection. He was waived as part of final cuts on August 26th.

"We’ll consider anything," Tom Coughlin said yesterday when asked about looking at free agent defensive backs. He followed it up by asking the reporter: "How are you with backpedaling? Pretty good?"

In addition to Caldwell, there were a large group of defensive backs at Friday's private workout, as well as a number of other currently unidentified players.

Everyone makes mistakes. Like the old saying goes, ‘the other guys get paid too’. But I keep expecting KP to be more of a force. Breaking up plays … getting INTs … being the traffic cop on deep throws … laying on the hit. We get glimpses of it every once in a while … but then he slips back into invisible mode. I really want him to step up. It’s his contract year too.

That may very well be true. It’s just that when you think of the few elite safeties … no one throws at them either … yet they seem to make big plays. I mean no one intentionally puts the ball near Polamalu … but he still makes tackles, grabs INTs, and breaks up passes. I’m not saying KP is on that level … who is? … but I expect him to be in on more plays.

Speaking for myself … just because I’m expressing a measure of unhappiness over my teams performance … I’m not trashing our playoff chances or predicting an 0-16 season.

We played like garbage … seemed unemotional … and then top’d it off by gassing out. That really pi$$es me off. But it’s just one game in a long season. We’ve overcome much worse. Right now I’m mad at how they performed, but there’s no towels being thrown.

Go 1-4 … or 2-5 … still playing this way … then maybe we have a different discussion.

Kenny Phillips was in the Coach’s Club after the game with Paul Dottino and only part of what he said wound up on the air. He was pretty miserable and felt that the defensive backfield had let the team down. Made no excuses. He did, though, subtly allude to the fact that when you’re beaten by the third best receiver on the opposition it’s tough to adjust. He made a reference to what Manningham was able to do to some good defenses last year and pretty much said “Hey, we had people on Ogletree who just aren’t capable of covering anyone with real talent if that guy has a good game”.

Think about how many good defenses Mario made big plays against last season. It’s hard to put three strong corners on the field for any team. When you have the injury problems we have it’s almost impossible. The way to offset it is get to the quarterback no matter how you have to do it. We didn’t on Wednesday, so we lost.

I thought Phillips and Rolle played pretty good games. The corners didn’t. Corey Webster needed to step up and didn’t. But on defense it still came down to the fact that Romo had way too much time thanks to our poor defensive effort up front and some idiots in stripes who were in way over their heads. The unsophisticated fan will figure that game wasn’t badly officiated. In fact, the refusal to call holding until being hammered about it on the sidelines by Coughlin for about 50 minutes of game time, and then making a few calls too late to matter, really hurt us. Look, you HAVE to overcome that, but it’s silly to pretend that did not have a significant influence on the outcome. It did. When was the last time Romo had 5 1/2- 7 seconds to release the ball against us? He had that on a number of plays. Their offensive line wasn’t THAT good and our defensive line wasn’t THAT bad. They were good, we were bad, but the officiating took both of those truths to real extremes.

I made the point about our d-line on the previous thread. In fact, aside from a few plays, Romo was upright most of the night. I can’t blame the refs on the lack of holding calls. There’s holding on nearly every play. There was some bad no calls, though.

Are we really beating up on the safeties here? Phillips had a decent game and Rolle was his typical “make-a-play-then-miss-a-play” self.

The problem was at cornerback. Michael Coe was the only cornerback who played well and he left in the second quarter. Corey Webster got absolutely abused and Justin Tryon wasn’t much better.

Between that, the lack of a pass rush, the lack of success by the Giants offense and the way the defense folded like a house of cards in the fourth quarter, they didn’t stand a chance against a pumped Dallas team.

I’m not beating up on them. Not at all. It’s just that I had a loftier expectation of Phillips. I thought … and still think … that he has a high ceiling. But after 4 years I’m starting to think that maybe ‘better than average’ is about where he falls.

We don’t have to beat up on the secondary they had little help from the LB’s in pass coverage and the line was awful with exception of JPP. Why didn’t they go with Hill out there on obvious passing downs. By the way I think they always had a MLB in their all game. Last year they used a safety. If they don’t trust these rookies then when they are forces to use them they won’t know what they are getting.